


Five Times Jonny and Brian Almost Dated (And One Time They Did)

by spacecitytraffic



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - College/University, Canon Disabled Character, M/M, Parental Conflict, Strong Language, content warnings for the whole thing:, jonny has heart problems and brian has eds, other mechs pop in occasionally but it's very focused on them, specific one-time content warnings will be in the notes for each chapter, that's right this is a college au that preserves their disabilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacecitytraffic/pseuds/spacecitytraffic
Summary: Exactly what it says on the tin, people. College Mechs AU, Jonny has heart problems and Brian has EDS, they fake date, they deal with their trauma, they fall in love, it's cute and angsty and sappy. Hopefully it provides some fluff for the heart this winter!(The fic is completed, and I plan to post a new chapter every couple days.)
Relationships: Drumbot Brian/Jonny d'Ville
Comments: 202
Kudos: 163





	1. The First Time They Bring It Up

**Author's Note:**

> Specific content warnings for this chapter: academic anxiety, brief descriptions of physical pain, and a character talks about being disowned.
> 
> Thanks so much to @casual_scribbles for catching my grammar goofs, as well as @matthewjae and @gay.wife for helping me write Brian's EDS accurately!

The new roommate is absolutely insufferable--and if Brian is being honest, he’s almost thankful for that fact. These days, there’s enough major stuff going on. It’s nice to have something small and manageably horrible to focus all his pettiness on, sometimes.

However, it  _ is _ a bit hard to feel properly grateful at one in the morning before a major philosophy exam. “Jonny…”

“Yeah, Brian?” The despicable roommate’s boots are propped up on the wall, and he’s leaning back in his chair like the world belongs to him. “What can I do for you this fine evening?”

“Do you  _ have _ to play your harmonica so…”

“Skillfully? Dramatically? Astonishingly well?”

Brian leans his elbows onto the desk, and his forehead onto his hands. “I was going to say  _ loudly _ . And so late at night.”

“Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to.” Jonny plants his feet firmly and pushes off the wall, sending his swivel chair spinning across the room. “But I see your point. Would you rather I sing? Or I could try to learn that banjo of yours…”

“ _ Don’t _ . Touch that.” Squeezing his eyes shut, Brian drives his thumbs into his temples to chase away his building headache. “Listen, I just need a minute of quiet. Can you do that for me? Just sixty seconds. I’m begging you.”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” Jonny says with a shrug. He’s still spinning, tossing his harmonica back and forth between both hands. “We both know you aren’t going to sleep any time soon.”

“Yes, but I need to  _ study. _ This test is  _ important. _ ”

“Come on, you’re the straight-A type, I can already tell. You don’t need to stress so much, you’re making me nervous.”

“I’m making you nervous?” Brian opens his eyes for the sole purpose of giving Jonny a capital-L sort of Look. “You’re the one who hasn’t quit moving for an hour.”

“I move when I’m nervous,” Jonny says with a shrug. “Not my fault you’re soaking the room with bad vibes.”

“Bad… are you serious right now?”

“You’ll never know.” He actually  _ winks _ , and for that, Brian is tempted to cross the room and punch him. 

Instead, he sighs and leans back in his chair. “Listen, you don’t have to stay here and put up with it. Why don’t you go for a run or something, so I can actually focus on this test?” He runs a hand through his hair, absently wondering if he should’ve left it tied back. “It’s  _ important _ .”

“Yeah, so you’ve said.” Having abandoned his spinning, Jonny proceeds to twist in the chair, slamming back and forth between his desk and his bedpost for momentum. “What’s so important about one measly little test? Surely a B won’t kill you.”

“It very well  _ might _ ,” Brian snaps. 

Oops. That… that came out more seriously than he intended it to.

But Jonny just arches his eyebrows and bounces a little more slowly between his furniture. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sighing, Brian covers his face with his hands. “I’m here on scholarship, okay? And with health stuff, I’ve missed some work, and I literally need an A in this class. Otherwise…”

“No more college?” Jonny suggests helpfully.

“No more good place to stay for the foreseeable future,” Brian forces himself to mutter. Apparently, he’s at that point of the night where the insufferable Jonny gets to know far too much about him. This’ll be a headache in the morning.

“Oh,” he says. “What about your parents?”

“Not my biggest fans,” Brian replies.

“Huh. Fuck ‘em.”

“Pardon?” 

“If you have to work yourself like this to pay for college…”

“...college, and everything else,” Brian supplies bitterly. 

“Everything? Wow.  _ Really _ fuck ‘em.” 

“Listen,” he says, trying to backpedal. “I have a job at the cafe and in the scene shop, I have a really good scholarship, I’m doing all right for myself. It’s nobody’s fault. I just… I just need to pass this test. That’s all. If I can just get past utilitarianism and deontology, everything will be just fine. Honestly.”

“Huh.” Jonny doesn’t look like he believes him, but at least he accepts the subject change. “Den-tology though… isn’t that, like, what a dentist does?”

“Lord almighty.” Brian flops back in his chair. “Listen, de-ont-ology is the moral theory advanced by Kant, among others, and it’s basically an argument for…”

“Here’s an idea,” Jonny cuts in. “The night is still young, and I still have the irrepressible urge to run a marathon or commit a crime or something of a similarly chaotic nature. So, solution: we walk and talk. You get to study by teaching me, and hopefully get in a better mood. And I get to get some energy out. Plan?”

Honestly, that... doesn’t sound like an awful idea. Brian’s joints have been doing pretty decent today, and he does need to get out of the room for a few minutes before he crashes completely. “The night isn’t actually that young, you know.”

“Okay, but maybe it’s a... young adult. It’s in college, like us. Not too late to totally change the course of its life, even though it’s sorta getting close.”

“What are you  _ talking _ about?”

“Not even I know that, most of the time.” Jonny hops to his feet expectantly. “So! Orthodontistry?”

“Deontology,” Brian corrects, clambering to his feet and grabbing his cane just in case. “It’s one of two modern branches of ethics, and…”

But Jonny is already out the door, and Brian sighs and follows him. This is gonna be… something.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

“So it’s basically just… ends justify means versus means justify ends?” Under the streetlights, Jonny’s expression teeters between quizzical and flummoxed. He’s surprisingly engaged, in that weird, intense way of his. But unfortunately, that’s led to a lot of frustration on his part when things don’t immediately make sense. 

“Means justify ends…” Brian frowns, pushing himself a little harder than he should to keep up. He’s sure Jonny doesn’t mean to walk so fast, but the guy is like a chihuahua, or a shot of espresso. So much energy in such a little body. “I mean, I wouldn’t put it that way, but sure?”

“Huh. Weird.” Jonny notices and tries hard to slow down. He almost succeeds, too. “So what happens if you just don’t care about the means or the ends?”

“I… guess you’d vibe more with nihilism, in that case?” Brian offers. “I dunno, I haven’t studied that one in-depth yet.”

“Ah.” Jonny chews on that for a minute, turning left to walk past a row of closed shops. The streets are empty at this time of night, and the only noise is the rattling of cicadas in distant trees. “What if you care about both the means and the ends?” 

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” Brian reminds him. “Sometimes you have to choose between them.”

Jonny snorts. “You’re really asking me, a noted pansexual, to make a choice? Bold of you to assume I can’t just choose both.”

At that, Brian almost misses a step, and his cane stutters on the concrete. “What was that?”

“Bold of you to assume I can’t just choose both?” Jonny asks innocently. 

“No, about… what exactly are you talking about choosing between?” Brian tries to stay a little bit subtle, but his spiking pulse won’t let him lie to himself. To keep from staring at Jonny, he fiddles with his finger braces instead.

“Utilities and dentistry, means and ends, ladies and gentlemen and everything in between…” Jonny shrugs casually, but his chin is tilted high like he’s ready to fight. “I like ‘em all. Problem?” 

“No, I just…” Suddenly, words are very very clumsy. Focus on the footsteps. Focus on the rhythmic stomp-stomp-tap. Get your head in order. “I’m. Erm. Not opposed to that at all.”

“Good.” Jonny nods firmly and tucks his thumbs into his belt loops. Then he glances over at Brian, and a very different glint enters his eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to be of a similar persuasion, now, would you?”

Brian’s cheeks are hot now, and his hair keeps sticking to his forehead. He should  _ not _ keep wearing it down, now that it’s this long. His parents always hate it when it gets like this. “Are you trying to  _ flirt _ with me?”

“I’m not  _ not _ trying to flirt with you,” Jonny admits with the kind of careless grin that’s only possible at two in the morning. “If you’re amenable.”

“I’m not, actually.” Brian swallows. “Not, ah. Amenable to any flirting, right now. Or anything like that. Not enough headspace free for that kind of thing these days. You know.” 

“Sure thing. Consider the subject dropped.” Jonny nods, and surprisingly enough, he seems to mean it. “Now, what to move on to… Shall we get back to dentistry?”

“Deontology,” Brian corrects, pushing his curls out of his face. “Kant’s idea that you should only do an action if you’re okay with the principle of that action becoming a universal principle for all human behavior.”

“Right. Means justify ends, right?” Glancing around, Jonny finds another turn to guide them down. He’s somehow still not out of that restless energy of his.

“Yeah, that one.” For a second, Brian stops and falls quiet, leaning on his cane. He tells himself it’s because he needs to gather his breath, but, well.. maybe he also needs to gather a little courage. “I… do want to clarify, though. I’m not in the market for anything right now. But, uh… boys are. Uh. Really pretty. In general.”

As he stops and turns, a sudden grin flashes across Jonny’s face. “God, I know, right? Like… have you seen Tim? The one with the guitar?”

“Oh, with the hair, and the dog?” Brian can’t help grinning in return. “He plays in the cafe every Friday at seven.”

“No way!” Jonny stares. “Well, that settles it. I’m a coffee person now. I just… his  _ voice... _ ”

Chuckling, Brian starts walking again. “ _ What _ a voice.”

“I know, right?” Jonny laughs, an actual honest laugh, and follows suit. “You know, he might be joining Dr. Carmilla’s band thingy, the one I’m doing for extra credit most afternoons. If you want to hear more of that voice, you could always join in.”

“And hear even more of that harmonica of yours?” Brian snorts. “No thanks.”

“Hey, if you play the drums loud enough, you can always drown me out,” Jonny quips. 

Brian grins and shakes his head. And maybe his hair does feel nice, swishing against his neck when he does that. “Not a chance. You know…”

Then his hip goes sideways, and that sentence stops short. He’s wrapped around his cane a moment later, clenching his teeth and doing his best to breathe through it. Ow. Okay. Okay, not as bad as it could be. Just… just pop it back in…

“You good, man?” Jonny is asking in a tight, overly calm voice. “What happened?”

“I’m… I’m fine, gimme a second.” Glancing around, Brian spots a bench on the sidewalk and limps straight for it. “Just need a rest, that’s all.” 

Jonny follows him nervously, not buying it. “Take all the time you need, Brian, you didn’t look… good. There. For a minute.”

“It happens,” Brian mumbles, sinking down onto the bench. His leg is throbbing dully now. But if he focuses on the cool night air and the noise of the cicadas, he can keep his breathing steady. “Just… just a temporary dislocation. My joints just kinda do that. It’s back in place now, it’s just a little… ow. It’ll be okay in a minute.”

“Huh.” Jonny sits down next to him, right on the edge of the streetlamp’s pool of yellow light. “So this is just a thing, then?”

“Yeah.” Brian takes a deep breath and tries to gather his wits, waiting for the pain to ebb into a dull ache. “Honestly, you get used to it. I can probably keep going as soon as we need to.”

“No need to rush, I get it.” Jonny leans back and taps his chest with a chuckle. “I’ve dealt with enough medical shit, pacemakers and surgeries and stuff. I’ll wait.”

Surprised, Brian glances up. “Heart problems?”

“Yup.” Jonny shrugs. “At this point, I’ve concluded that it actively hates me.”

Brian has to snort. “I think my heart’s the only thing I  _ haven’t  _ had a problem with, at this point.”

That makes Jonny actually laugh, a careless, cackling thing. “God, we make a pair. You could probably make a whole healthy person out of both of us put together.”

“Emphasis on probably,” Brian deadpans. “Listen, the pain’s pretty much gone now, but I don’t a hundred percent trust this hip anymore. Would you be okay with just… heading back? We’re pretty close to the dorm already, and I know a shortcut.”

“Of course, yeah.” Jonny doesn’t move right away, though. “You sure you’re good, though? No reason to push it too fast, it’s nice out here tonight.”

“Nah, I’m okay. Thanks, though.” Brian bites his lip. “Seriously, I… appreciate it.”

“Basic human decency?” Jonny’s eyebrows scrunch together, and he squints at Brian. “You’re… welcome?”

“Yeah, whatever,” he waves him off. Gripping his cane, Brian hauls himself to his feet to only minimal protestation from his hip. It’s still none too stable, but he knows how to keep most of his weight off of it. “You ready?”

Jonny is already up and raring to go. “Only if you are.”

“All right, then we’ll go.” Brian wavers for a second, then decides to just say what’s on his mind. “You know, maybe I will think about joining your... band. Thing. But  _ only _ if you promise to never play the harmonica in the room again.”

“But how else am I going to practice?” Jonny demands, scandalized. “And after tonight, I think you owe me at least that.”

“After you dragged me across town and kept me from my studying?” Brian’s eyebrows go up. “Who owes whom for that?”

“Did explaining it all to me help, or did it not?” Jonny demands. 

“Well…” Brian thinks for a second, then tries to sigh and shake his head long-sufferingly. But somehow it comes out as a laugh instead. “I guess you’re not wrong.”

“You’re gonna do great. Come on.” Jonny rolls his eyes and strides in the direction of the dorm. 

“You’re awful,” Brian mutters, following wearily after him. His whole leg is sore at this point, and he knows he’s going to be exhausted in the morning. But he’s smiling, all the same.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

So, yes, the new roommate is still insufferable. That’s certainly never going to change. But all the same… well, the next day, Brian does get an A on the exam. And afterward, when he’s crashing on the couch with a mug of green tea and an aching body, he lets his hair fall down past his jawline with almost a smile. He’s not happy, exactly. But things seem a little less bleak. 

Yes, Jonny is insufferable. But Brian may have lost all rights to complain.


	2. Sea Shanties, Fake Dating, and Other Coping Mechanisms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, but packed with pining all the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific content warnings for this chapter: a character has ADHD and hyperfixates, so there's a description of losing track of time and space and the stress that causes. 
> 
> Thanks so much to @casual_scribbles and @that_genderfluid_geek for beta reading this chapter!

Jonny is doing… well,  _ good _ might be an overstatement most days, but he’s doing fair enough. Sure, it’s been a capital-d Day, but all of that fuckery is over now. And he finally has a chance to breathe out. 

That’s why, at 11PM on a Thursday night, Jonny is leaning up against the sink in his dorm’s common room, softly singing sea shanties to himself and scrubbing dishes clean like his life depends on it. He actually likes doing the dishes. It’s mindless, it’s physical, it feels like he’s actually accomplishing something. You could lose yourself in this, you know. Minutes slip away. Rinse, scrub, soap, scrub, rinse…

Then someone else’s voice cuts into his thoughts, and Jonny flinches against his will. “What?” he snaps, swatting at the faucet to turn it off. It’s not his fault he was startled. It’s not his fault the background noise of the damn tap keeps him from hearing much of anything else.

“Oh, I was just saying you didn’t have to stop,” the insufferably nice Brian says with a timid smile. He’s hesitating in the doorway, leaning on a pair of arm crutches and looking almost afraid to come in. 

“Stop what?” By the heat in his face, Jonny can tell his ears are red. He lost track of time, didn’t he? Exactly how many dishes has he washed? The plate currently gripped in his soapy hands doesn’t look like his at all. 

“Singing,” Brian ventures. “You, ah… sounded really nice.”

“Oh,” Jonny says, still trying to connect himself with what’s in front of him. Soap bubbles, faded linoleum, a whole tower of clean dishes that were never supposed to be his problem. At least somebody might be grateful. “I didn’t realize I had. Stopped. Guess I just… got too into it.”

“That’s fair.” Brian shrugs, then swallows his hesitancy and makes his way across the kitchen. He shifts his weight to one side, opens the fridge, and stares vacantly into its luminous depths. “I swear I was gonna grab something in here…”

While Brian mumbles to himself, Jonny clenches his jaw and looks back down at the sink. There are only a few bowls left, and he might as well finish what he started. Doing dishes for the whole dorm. What a goddamn philanthropist.

WIth a huff, he turns the sink on and lets the hot water splash over the skin of his hand. Thankfully, the searing sting helps snap him back into the present. It’s sometime after 11PM on a Thursday night, and he’s washing dishes in the common room. God, he can’t even do that right?

“...and I remember thinking, I wanted something while I worked on this godforsaken essay, but… oh. Ice cream? Ice cream.” Brian is rummaging in the freezer, now. “I think that was it. Do you ever do stuff like that? It drives me crazy when I do.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Jonny manages to reply. He squirts blue dish soap into a bowl, grabbing a sponge and going at it with vigor. But despite his sour mood, it’s… it’s honestly a little nice to hear a steady voice while he tries to reorient himself. Judging by the nonchalance in Brian’s ramblings, he’s either oblivious to Jonny’s headspace, or he’s familiar enough with it to know exactly what will help. Instead of dwelling on that for too long, Jonny decides to just keep listening. 

“...and if I have to write one more word about the Hundred Years War, I may lose my  _ mind _ for the next century or so. If anybody deserves ice cream, it’s me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a good essay. Good class, too.” With a huff, Brian finally finds his ice cream and sets it on the counter. “Good teacher, good people… well, mostly.”

At that, Jonny’s eyebrows jump up. “There some bastard I need to beat up for you?”

“No, no, please no beating people up,” Brian blurts, eyes suddenly wide. “Jonny. No.”

He snorts. “Come on, the last guy deserved it!” 

“You almost ended up in the ER.”

“That was not because I lost the fight, though.” Jonny pauses his scrubbing to hold up a finger in correction. “It was because I won the fight. A little too handily. And my heart was not impressed with the sudden spike in… well, everything.”

“You hit the  _ ground _ .”

“Briefly. It happens.”

“ _ Jonny _ .”

“You were saying?” he asks, all innocence.

Brian glares at him for a few moments, lips pressed together like a disapproving schoolmarm. Then eventually, he gives up and starts scooping his ice cream into a bowl. “There’s just somebody in my history class I don’t love. That’s all. You don’t need to go beat anybody up, I promise. We just don’t click. In general.”

“Okay, okay, maybe I don’t  _ need _ to beat anyone up today.” Jonny goes back to washing the last few dishes in the sink. “But what if I  _ want _ to?”

“Listen, it’s not even a big deal,” Brian protests. 

“Then why are you being so cagey about it?”

He blinks. “Cagey?”

“Cagey,” Jonny repeats with a shrug. “Avoidant, noncommittal, evasive--”

“Yes, I know what  _ cagey _ means.” Brian intentionally focuses all his attention on the ice cream he’s scooping. (Strawberry, nice choice.) “Look, it’s not even as big a deal as all that. Just some girl who won’t take  _ no _ for an answer. Won’t take  _ I’m gay _ for an answer, either. Thinks I just haven’t met the right girl. That’s all.”

Jonny scoffs at the back of his throat. “Oh, and clearly she’s the one to show you the error of your ways.”

“She’s lovely,” Brian protests. “I think. Like, I can see that if I was attracted to girls, she might be… aesthetically pleasing? To like, paint a picture of?”

“God, you’re hopeless.” Jonny chuckles, finishing off the very last plate and shutting off the tap. Now he technically doesn’t have anything keeping him here, but he’s far too invested in this conversation by now, so he grabs a towel and starts drying. “Oh, but you’re telling more people now! Good on you for that!”

“Yeah, it just kinda… slips out sometimes,” Brian admits halfheartedly.

“Nothing wrong with that at all.” Jonny shrugs. “Why not just tell her she’s out of luck, though?”

“I  _ have _ ,” he answers, voice strained. “Repeatedly. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t take her seeing me actually dating a man to convince her I’m never going to be for her.”

In that instant, a lightbulb goes off in the sector of Jonny’s brain devoted to “evil genius ideas”. His eyes must light up, because Brian is instantly backpedaling a moment later. 

“No, no, no, I didn’t mean it like  _ that-- _ ”

Jonny sets down the plate and the dishcloth, leaning back against the counter with a shit-eating grin. “I’m not saying we have to  _ actually  _ date. I’m just saying it would be  _ hilarious _ .”

“No!” Brian is flushing now, almost as vibrantly pink as the ice cream that lies forgotten at his elbow. I’ve told you, I am  _ not  _ interested in dating right now.”

“And I just told you, we wouldn’t actually be dating. Just fake-dating. For a bit.” Jonny flexes his hands, then starts counting off on his fingers. “Benefit one: it would get rid of this girl. Benefit two: it would get all the weird who-should-I-come-out-to stuff over with, it’d just be obvious. Benefit three: it’d be fucking  _ hilarious _ . What could go wrong?”

“Have you never read fanfiction?” Brian demands, voice jumping up an octave. “So much. So much could go wrong.”

“But consider this: it’d be funny.” Jonny arches his eyebrows, firmly considering this counterpoint to be the ultimate blow to end all blows.

“I am not fake dating my roommate just because it would be  _ funny _ ,” Brian blurts out. He grabs the ice cream carton and shoves it back in the fridge, fumbling with his crutches in the process. “End of story.”

“But it would be  _ such _ a good story,” Jonny counters. 

“No way. No.” And before Jonny can get in another word, Brian grabs his bowl of melting strawberry ice cream and scurries off down the hall. “I still have an essay to work on!” he flings over his shoulder in parting.

Jonny shrugs and returns to his dish drying. Brian’s right, it’ll probably never happen, but… Eh, it was worth a shot. 


	3. Christmas Parties Are the Worst

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fake dating! Fake dating! Fake dating! It's finally time, boys!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: dissociation, loud crowds, a character has painful memories associated with Christmas. 
> 
> Thanks to @casual_scribbles for beta reading this chapter!

Sometimes, it’s a bad idea to say things out loud. Like, for example, the word “dating.” Especially the word “dating.” Because after Jonny’s little stunt in the kitchen a couple weeks ago, the concept of having a boyfriend has lived in Brian’s head absolutely rent-free, and it keeps appearing at the most inconvenient of times. 

See a sappy movie. What if you had a hand to hold? See that girl from History 205. What if you did have somebody to keep you safe from that sort of thing? See Jonny roll his sleeves up to his elbows, and hear his quiet singing voice that was meant for nobody else to hear, and--

No, that’s  _ definitely  _ one bridge too far. It’s one thing to get soft over the concept of having a theoretical person to kiss and get coffee with, who will hold you through the bad health days and laugh with you over nothing at all. It’s another thing to think of any one person in particular, and an entirely new category of  _ No _ to simp for Jonathan Goddamned D’Ville. (Is that his full name? It should be. He’s insufferable.)

Anyway. The long and short of it is that Brian is  _ struggling _ . And, as of about ten minutes ago, that suffering has reached new and exciting heights. Which is why Brian is video calling his roommate and cursing himself to the moon and back while doing so.

“Hey, Jonny?” Brian’s cheeks are burning, and he hopes his phone’s crappy camera won’t pick up that particular detail. “I, um. Need a favor.”

On the screen, Jonny seems to be arching an eyebrow. “What  _ kind _ of favor?”

“I, uh…” Brian swallows hard. “So. You know how theatre people are, right?”

“More or less,” Jonny quips. “Seeing that I’ve been a part of every production since I got here.”

“Yeah, yeah. The point is… there’s this big Christmas party tonight, everybody at the scene shop is trying to drag me, you know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah, that whole deal.” Jonny snaps his fingers in recognition. “Over at Marius’ place, right?”

“Yeah. Well.” Brian tries hard not to look like a kid who’s been caught with one hand in the cookie jar, but it’s not working. “I didn’t want to go, because you know,  _ everything about me? _ ”

Jonny squints. “Bad health day?”

“Health stuff, I’m just generally not a people person, I don’t much like Christmas in general, I don’t even celebrate it, for God’s sake…” Brian sighs and squeezes his eyes shut. “Look, the point is, I didn’t want to go. But I also can’t tell people no. So I… may have made up a really dumb excuse off the top of my head.”

At that, Jonny actually snorts. “Dear Lord. Brian. What did you do.”

“I, uh… told them I couldn’t. Because I uh. Had a date.” By now, Brian can’t look at the screen. He doesn’t want to imagine what Jonny’s face must look like as he listens to all of this. “With my boyfriend.” 

For a few seconds, there’s dead silence over the line. Then, the unmistakable low chuckle that builds into a cackle that is Jonny’s horrible triumphant laugh. “No fucking way.”

“Listen, I didn’t--”

“You took my advice! You actually did it! Hell, I’m almost--I’m proud of you, Brian.”

“No, no, that’s not how it happened at all,” Brian interrupts, looking guiltily back up at his phone. The words are tumbling out of his mouth now. “I just--you mentioned it the other day, your awful fake dating plan, and it--it was an awful plan, but for some reason it just stuck there in my mind, it was stressing me out, and they asked me what my excuse was, and my brain just--just went there, and before I knew it--well, it uh--happened?”

Jonny is wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, now, and his video quality is shaky. “Oh my God, you actually did it. What did they  _ say? _ ”

Brian squeezes his eyes shut. This is the kicker. “They said not to worry about it, uh… they said I should just  _ bring my boyfriend along _ .”

“And?”

“I panicked, okay? I… may have… I may have told them…”

“You said you’d bring him, didn’t you.”

“...maybe.”

Jonny is snorting again, and he rubs his temples with the hand not supporting his phone. “Oh, it’s a good thing you have a roommate who is up for literally anything that causes chaos.”

“I didn’t tell them a name, it doesn’t have to be you…”

“Oh, but it’s going to be.” Jonny flashes the most evil grin he has. “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll be right there with you.”

“The party isn’t until eight!”

“Okaaaaaay. But I will be there then. And in  _ style _ .”

“Please behave?”

Jonny just cackles again and hangs up, leaving Brian to sit alone on a bench with his abysmal life choices. Fake dating. Jonny D’Ville. God, this is so not worth it.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

“Okay, we’re clear on the ground rules, right?”

Jonny rolls his eyes dramatically, a gesture emphasized by the thicker-than-usual eyeliner around them. He has made good on his promise to be here in style, at least: his huge coat is a million shades of red, and Brian is pretty sure his boots have at least a few inches of heel to them. “Yeah, yeah. You have mentioned them a few times.”

Brian presses his lips together, still stressed. It’s freezing out here, and tiny flakes of snow are already whistling through the air. But no matter how pink his nose is turning, he will not go in there without making sure his roommate will behave. “So? What are they?”

Jonny heaves a sigh. “No physical contact without asking first, no inventing outlandish stories about you, no getting blackout drunk, no… how did you put it? Being weird?”

“Yes! And no telling anyone else about this unless it is absolutely necessary!” Brian pulls his wool coat tighter. “Do we have an understanding?”

“Yeah, yeah. Can we go in now?”

Brian glances at the door to Marius’ off-campus apartment, suddenly seized by a different kind of anxiety. “Sure. Let’s, uh… head in for a minute. But I’m not planning on staying long, anyway.”

“Yeah, didn’t expect ya to.” Jonny swaggers up and mashes the doorbell a few times. “Hello-o-o-o!”

A moment later, the door swings open, and a rush of muffled music floods out to meet them. Marius steps forward, grinning and dressed head to toe like a gaudy Christmas tree. “Ah, Brian, excellent to see you! And--oh, Jonny, I didn’t… oh, wait,  _ oh! _ You two are--”

“Giving dating a shot, we’ll see how it goes,” Brian says quickly with a bright smile. 

“The idea came up as a joke, but I think it’s going surprisingly well so far.” Jonny actually winks at Brian. “I guess the roommates trope hasn’t failed us yet.”

Marius is glancing back and forth between them so fast, Brian is afraid he’ll get whiplash. “Fascinating! I would never have expected… and yet it makes so much sense, now that I’m seeing you two together… Your personalities really are quite complimentary, like two halves of one psyche, almost…”

“We get it, you’re a psych major,” Jonny cuts in. As he does, he pushes his way past Marius into the apartment with all of his usual consideration for tact and personal space, red coat flapping behind him. “Tell me the eggnog in here is spiked?”

“Jonny!” Brian retorts before he can help himself.

“Yes,  _ dearest _ , I’ll behave,” Jonny tosses over his shoulder as he goes. “Come on, get in here, Ivy made cookies!”

With growing horror, Brian becomes acutely aware that he never made any rules against pet names. Damn it all. He should just leave now, just abort this idiot mission while he still can. But against his better judgment, he really does want some of those Christmas cookies...

Noticing and utterly misinterpreting the look on Brian’s face, Marius just grins. “See? Complimentary.”

Brian smiles artificially, realizing that this is going to be a long, long evening. And then he follows Jonny inside.

\----------------------------------------------------------------

Things Brian remembered to stress about: the noise and overstimulation of a huge party, the possibility of regretting his decision not to bring a cane, Jonny D’Ville in his entirety. 

Things Brian forgot to stress about: how much he hates Christmas itself. 

Because now that he’s here, sipping eggnog awkwardly in Marius’ packed living room and trying not to drown in all the noise, he’s realizing exactly what he’s gotten himself into. That Tim guy is standing on the coffee table and telling a story at the top of his lungs, Marius has busted out his violin for Christmas carols, some bizarre person in a bright red waistcoat keeps trying to make toasts with a teacup, and the worst part is… the worst part is that the noise isn’t even the thing that’s getting to him. 

If anything, it’s the  _ quiet _ . It seems like there’s a little bubble around Brian’s head, cutting him off from the rowdiness and the music and the warm twinkling lights. He’s just… it’s just that he’s always alone. Especially now. This is his first Christmas with literally nowhere to go. When the party is over and the grating violin music stops, the rest of these people will go back home, and Brian will still be here alone, and he’s always hated Christmas anyway, and… oh. 

Oh, right. This is what dissociation feels like, isn’t it? Brian isn’t  _ gone _ , he’s just floating inside his own head, and it feels like a tiny bit of the emptiness of outer space managed to leak inside his chest, and…

Something jostles his elbow, and Brian flinches and looks down at whatever could have hit him. His brain is lagging, but it catches up with his eyes a second later to see… a hand. Jonny’s hand, festooned with calluses and multicolored nail polish, held open for some reason. Like an invitation, like…

“Dammit, Jonny, not now.” Brian squeezes his eyes shut and opens them a couple times, trying to shake his head and clear it. “I know… I get we have to keep up appearances, but…”

“Not asking. Just offering.” Somehow, Jonny’s voice is low enough not to grate but still loud enough to be clear over the party’s noise. “You looked like you needed something to anchor you, that’s all.”

Brian’s chest tightens in momentary indecision. The consequences--the implications--this is a real offer, not some charade, and--but God, the idea of an anchor--but Jonny--but  _ Jonny _ \--

Then that calloused hand is slipping into Brian’s own, carefully but steadily, and it’s something real and solid and  _ warm _ . “Is that okay?”

_ Okay?  _ Is it  _ okay? _ Brian grips Jonny’s hand with everything in him, like it really is a physical anchor that’ll keep him from flying away forever. He almost spills the cup of eggnog in his other hand, but that fact barely registers. Suddenly, his eyes are stinging with tears he never goddamn asked for. “Yeah,” he manages. “I… thanks…”

“Don’t mention it.” Jonny gives a quick squeeze, and goddamnit, why is this the thing that makes Brian want to lose it right here and now? 

“I’m okay,” he mutters between clenched teeth. “I swear I’m actually fine, I just… It’s just pretty loud in here, that’s all. I’ll be okay.”

“Yeah? You wanna go somewhere a little quieter?”

There’s that chest-hurt-oh-God-he-expects-me-to-say-something feeling, and Brian doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what would help, and then--

“C’mon. Follow me.”

Brian can’t see anything further than his hand in Jonny’s, but he’s being led somewhere, weaving through bodies in the crowd, and somehow Jonny is keeping him from running into anything, because he thinks that if he did run into even one thing his cup would spill and he would  _ lose it _ , and… huh, wow, it is quieter in here. 

Jonny is standing in front of him, voice softer than ever to match the change in surroundings. “Take a look around. Is this a good place for you?”

Brian tries to oblige, tries to make his brain keep up with what his eyes are looking at. They’re back out in the foyer, there are a couple chairs, a piano in the corner, someone with red-purple hair rambling confidentially to the current pianist, who seems to be playing some strange version of Greensleeves… and that’s about it. A room, some furniture, four people, some background noise. 

“Yeah, I… I can handle this.”

“Great. Wanna get you to a chair?”

“Yeah. That’s… a good idea.” 

Brian feels himself being led over to a couple of seats and sinks down gratefully, letting the ache of his decompressing joints ground him even more. Jonny still hasn’t let go of his hand, which he feels more thankful for than he probably should. “I… I appreciate this. You know.”

Jonny shrugs carelessly beside him. “Eh, the break was probably good for me, too. Parties like that take a lot out of me too, you know.”

Even though it feels like he’s hearing it through a haze, Brian still manages to be surprised. “But you’re so… loud?”

“Yeah, well.” Jonny crosses his legs. “I can only be on performer mode for so long before it gets exhausting, but it gets a little out of control at big things like this. I think I already have a headache.” 

Brian studies him out of the corner of his eye. Jonny’s voice is actually fairly flat and matter-of-fact, and he sounds a little like he’s admitting something. “I wouldn’t have guessed that about you.”

“Yeah, well, don’t tell anybody.” Jonny rolls his eyes. “I do have a reputation as a bottomless source of chaos to uphold.”

“Duly noted. I do owe you for this one,” Brian says, taking a small sip of his eggnog. It is in fact spiked, which can’t be good for his mental health, but the flavor helps him ground himself nonetheless.

“I already told you, you don’t. Just take your time.” Jonny squeezes Brian’s hand another time and sends uncomfortable butterflies through his ribcage. “Anything else I can do?”

Brian swallows hard, trying not to think too much about anything that’s happening right now. Jonny literally just stepped in to save him, that’s all. That’s it. Brian has no right to think about him in any way other than with the normal amount of gratitude a normal person would have toward their friend. “I… I think, just sitting here is helping.”

“Cool. Raph actually isn’t that bad a pianist,” Jonny adds, jerking his chin toward the pianist in the corner. 

“Yeah, she’s really good.” Brian takes another sip of eggnog. “This one’s  _ In Dulci Jubilo,  _ right?”

“Fuck if I know,” Jonny replies with a snort. 

“Yeah, I think it is.” 

They sit there for a while, decompressing and listening to the music. It’s nice. Brian feels… connected to something, at least a little bit. Not necessarily the chaos in the next room over, the music and shouts that can still be dimly heard through the thin walls of the house. But maybe Brian does belong to the little alcove of solace out here. Sure, break still won’t be fun, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t belong anywhere. This can be his space. The silence.

Then Jonny’s phone buzzes, and he digs it out to check it without letting go of Brian’s hand. “Huh. Looks like Marius needs my help with some folks out there who had a little more eggnog than rum tonight.”

“I assume he didn’t ask you for your skills in peaceable de-escalation?” Brian asks, quirking his lip. 

“No, he did not.” Jonny chuckles. “Well, I’m always up for a spot of violence on a Friday night, so I don’t see a reason to hold out on the poor boy. Are you gonna be good if I leave you here for a minute?”

Brian nods emphatically. “Yeah, I’m honestly fine, at this point. Feel free, I’ll probably still be here if you ever come back.” 

“But of course I’ll be back for you, my  _ darling _ dearest,” Jonny drawls with a wink. “After all, you did ask me here as your date.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Jonny…”

He squeezes Brian’s hand, lets it go, and hops up with a cheery grin. “Toodles!” 

Brian rolls his eyes. “Just don’t land yourself in the ER again, idiot.”

“I’ll do my best, my lovely lady love.” And with a wink, Jonny turns on his heel and disappears out the door. 

Brian groans and massages his temples, taking a long drink of his eggnog. This entire fake dating situation was a  _ bad idea _ . But… well, Jonny wasn’t exactly wrong, it is more hilarious than anything else. Despite himself, Brian finds himself worrying after his roommate. He really hopes that the fight doesn’t trigger any heart problems, or…

No way. No way is he letting Jonny D’Ville’s reckless life choices take up any more room in his head than they need to. Brian takes another long swig of eggnog to hide his guilty smile and resolves to distract himself by focusing on the piano music.

The tactic works well for a while. This Raph character really is an excellent pianist, and her choice of carols keeps getting more and more obscure until even a music nerd like Brian doesn’t recognize some of the tunes. But then the redhead manages to drag her away to go look at something else, and the empty piano sits in need of someone to play it, and the slight buzz from the eggnog has put a damper on Brian’s impulse control…

Before he knows it, Brian is limping across the room and sliding onto the piano bench, flexing his fingers and trying to remember a carol he knows. God, he hasn’t played in ages, but at least he’s the only person in here. There’s nobody around to judge his mistakes. 

After a few seconds of noodling on some half-remembered notes, Brian finally stumbles onto the chords and part of the melody to Jingle Bells. His finger braces mean a few of the notes hit stiffly, but he soon remembers how to work around them. The song isn’t hard, but it’s fun, and he’s playing with confidence by the time he’s a few bars in. Then he fumbles through White Christmas, tries and fails to remember Ding Dong Merrily on High, and by the time he ends up on Carol of the Bells, he’s actually fairly into it. 

His unpracticed fingers fly over the notes, slamming into octaves without poise but with fervor. It’s always been his favorite Christmas song--no sickly sweet sentiments that alienate anybody who might not be madly in love with this time of year, just haunting chords and cool minor-key sounds. His hands cross over each other, trip, recover, improvise, and manage to remember the majority of the song. It doesn’t sound anything like any of his old teachers would want, but to hell with them. This is just fun. Finally, it ends on a strong tonic chord, and as the final vibrations die away…

Oh, goddamnit. 

As the final vibrations of Carol of the Bells disappear under his now exhausted hands, he hears the sound of somebody  _ clapping. _

Brian whirls around, already a little out of breath, to see none other than Jonny D’Ville standing in the doorway and smiling broadly. “Damn, Brian, you never told me you played piano, too.”

“I… that wasn’t…”

“It was pretty good, if you asked me.” Jonny crosses the room and leans one shoulder against the corner of the piano with a shit-eating grin. “So how come you won’t join the Doc’s band again?”

“Because I don’t like people hearing me,” Brian protests, as soon as he can marshal enough brain cells to flush bright red. “I’m not… it’s been way too long since I’ve been any good, and I don’t…”

“Seemed pretty all right to me.” Jonny shrugs. “Listen, Nastya’s asking after you. She’s trying to remember who all was there during the last Shakespeare show we did, and I think you did set, right?”

“Yeah, uh…”

“Cool, come on. Then after that, we can head home, all right?” Jonny holds out a hand to Brian, who automatically takes it. “It’ll be fun,  _ babe _ .”

Brian is tempted to yank his hand away just to spite his roommate, but he gives a little huff and goes with it. “You’re having way too much fun with this fake dating thing, aren’t you?”

“You’re the one who suggested it.”

“Well--”

“You love me.”

“I do  _ not!  _ I just--”

“Ooh, defensive. I like your style,” Jonny crows. But then he bumps Brian’s shoulder to let him know he’s joking. “C’mon, Nastya’s waiting.”

“I am going to end you,” Brian seethes. But he has to admit, he’s actively trying not to laugh. 

The rest of the party is still a little overwhelming, but Jonny doesn’t let go of Brian’s hand the whole time, which helps him stay as present as he can. Within a few minutes, it turns out that Nastya and Raph are also in the mood to head out early, and so Jonny and Brian pile into the back of Nastya’s car in utter exhaustion, and the four set off. 

The ride back to the dorms isn’t a long one, but Brian… well. Blame it on the dissociation and the eggnog and the party and his health taking it out of him. Blame it on the fact that Jonny still hasn’t let go of his hand, for some stupid reason. Blame it on anything other than his stupid heart, which should be the only part of him that actually works right, but that keeps speeding up every time Jonny’s fingers tighten around his, and… well…

The fact is that Brian falls asleep on his roommate’s shoulder somewhere during the ride home. 


	4. There Have Got To Be Easier Ways To Get a Scholarship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jonny drags Brian to a music competition, which isn't the easiest time for either one of them. And sure, they don't actually need to pretend to be dating. But they do anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: there's a brief argument, a character goes nonverbal, a character has stress dreams about home, a character has bad memories associated with music and competition.
> 
> Thanks so much to @drunkspacearchivist and @casualscribbles for beta reading this one!

Jonny knows he’s not the most observant person in the world, but he has managed to notice a few things since that party at Marius’ place. Mostly the fact that Brian hasn’t mentioned anything that happened that night, and that that probably means Jonny shouldn’t bring it up, either. And he hasn’t. He’s been good. What happens in a fake dating shenanigan stays in a fake dating shenanigan, he knows the rules. 

However. 

He  _ knows _ that the topic of hand-holding is off limits, and he  _ knows _ that if he brings up the falling-asleep-on-top-of-him episode, he’ll probably lose a limb. 

However. 

The piano playing… that might be a little harder not to mention. Especially because of a certain, erm,  _ pickle _ that Jonny has since found himself in. And, being a non-romantic incident, that’s not  _ technically _ covered under the unspoken confidentiality arrangement he and Brian have found themselves in, right? 

Jonny finally decides to bring the matter up on the second-to-last day of finals week. When he walks into the dorm, Brian is swaddled in a blanket on the floor in the corner, sipping a massive mug of cocoa and staring at his computer blankly. 

“Is this a bad time?” Jonny observes wryly. 

In response, Brian just groans and slams his laptop closed. “Please. Save me. I don’t care what you want to talk about, just make it something other than philosophy. I need a break.”

Jonny snorts. “That class is still killing you?”

“I said anything  _ other _ than that.” Brian rubs his eyes and rakes a hand through his hair, sending golden curls spiraling in every direction. “What’s up, anyway? Last time I saw you, you were pulling a double all-nighter in the basement of the music building.”

“Finished my final, promptly crashed on the carpet under a grand piano, woke up about an hour ago to a couple unfortunate text messages.” Jonny slings his backpack onto his desk and collapses into his chair. “Apparently, Raph is gonna have to go to New York for her back over break, no ifs ands or buts about it.”

“Oh, man, it’s getting that bad?” Brian sighs. “That sucks, I’ll be sure to stay in touch with her.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Jonny takes a deep breath. “Unfortunately, um. She wasn’t able to get an appointment that didn’t conflict with the big folk music competition coming up. You know, the one she’s playing piano for?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s your accompanist, right?” Brian takes a long swig of cocoa, holding onto his mug like it’s the last thing standing between him and total exhaustion. “That’s a big change. What are you gonna do without her?”

Jonny just raises an eyebrow and stares at Brian. 

“What, am I supposed to know…” It looks like the gears in his brain are slowly trying to turn. Then suddenly, realization dawns. “No. No, no, I am not--”

“Listen, I’m just asking,” Jonny cuts him off quickly. “You’re free to say no if you want to. But I heard you at the party, you were really good!”

“I do  _ not _ like to play in front of people, I have  _ already _ told you.” Brian is already bristling defensively. “You knew the answer would be no, so I don’t get why--”

“I know,” Jonny interrupts again, “but there’s a huge scholarship in it for both of us if we win, and I just think you should  _ think _ about it.”

Brian snorts. “There’s no way we’re going to win if I’m on the piano, I can tell you that right now.”

“Are you kidding me? You were incredible at the party, I don’t know why you don’t--”

“Why don’t you find somebody else to drag to this insane thing, anyway?”

“It’s not insane, and most of the other pianists at this school already want to deck me, so I don’t exactly have a lot of options.”

“You must be really desperate if you’re asking--”

“No, you’re goddamn incredible, and I really need this scholarship, and I don’t understand why you won’t just--”

“Because I’m fucking  _ tired _ of it!” 

That sits in the air for a few seconds. Brian’s shoulders are tight, and his lips are pressed furiously together. Then slowly, Jonny lets out a long whistle. 

“Didn’t think I’d hear that word out of you any time soon.”

“That…” Gradually, Brian seems to realize what he just said. His eyes widen slightly, and he shrinks into himself, pulling his lanky limbs closer to himself under his blanket. “God, I’m sorry, I… I didn’t mean to yell.”

Jonny chuckles and leans back in his seat. “You call that yelling? Tim’s dog gets louder than that when he’s begging for scraps. No, I was just impressed, I didn’t think you knew that word.”

“Yeah, but I… I don’t like to use it.” Brian takes a guilty drink of cocoa, probably just trying to hide his rapidly flushing face. “I shouldn’t snap at people.”

“You stood up for yourself,” Jonny says with a shrug. “I pushed you to it, but I’ll back off now. No harm, no foul.”

“Thanks,” Brian mutters into his mug. 

Arching an eyebrow, Jonny studies him. “You gonna spiral on me?” 

“No,” he replies unconvincingly. A long pause. “Listen, I just--music was--it was always a lot of pressure for me, and--”

“You don’t gotta explain anything to me.” With a shrug, Jonny kicks up his feet onto his desk and digs his phone out of his pocket. “I bet I can find somebody who’s decent at piano, I literally just asked you because you were the best I knew that didn’t also want to kill me. But there’s… oh, Raph told me she knew somebody from one of her classes, I can get her to give me their number…”

“How…” Brian looks like he hates himself, but he forces himself to keep talking now that he’s started. “How big a scholarship?”

Jonny raises an eyebrow. “A semester’s tuition, full ride, minus room and board.”

“For both of us?” Brian asks reluctantly. 

“If we win it all, yeah. But placing in the top ten would get both the vocalist and the accompanist a pretty decent sum, too.” Jonny tries not to sound like it matters too much to him. 

“Oh, goddamnit.” Brian stares into the depths of his cocoa, looking furious at himself for even considering. “How much time would I have to learn the song?”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I want you to do it, sure, but I don’t want you to--”

“How much time?” His voice is firm. Not harsh, but firm. 

Jonny blows out a long breath. “Four days?”

At that, Brian just gives a ridiculing laugh. “Really? Four days? That’s it?”

“Well, Raph’s back didn’t decide to give her a two-week notice before it gave out on her,” Jonny points out reasonably.

“That’s fair, I guess.” Brian takes a drink of cocoa. “What song?”

“Haul Away Joe,” Jonny says, and a grin slowly creeps across his face. “It’s a sea shanty, it’s pretty simple, but… does this mean you’re interested?”

“I know what Haul Away Joe is,” Brian replies, studiously focusing on a half-melted marshmallow that’s stuck on the rim of his mug. “It shouldn’t be too hard to accompany that… did Raph give you any sheet music?”

“Yeah, I can get it from her.” Jonny’s grin is now comparable to that of a full-sized Cheshire cat. “So you  _ are _ interested?”

Brian blows out a deep breath and opens up his laptop. “Listen, I have to study for this philosophy final before I do anything else. But… I’ll think about it. Let me think about it. Okay?”

\------------------------------

Brian never does actually outright say he’s interested. But he shoots Jonny an email asking for the dates and the sheet music, and then he starts listening to sea shanties while he studies, and then finally, Jonny is walking past the practice rooms and hears the muffled but unmistakable notes to the piano version of Haul Away Joe. And that’s when he knows Brian is in. 

After a moment of internal debate, Jonny decides to lurk outside the practice room, only briefly glancing inside the window to make sure that it is in fact Brian in there. But of course it is. His sweater sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, and his hair is wadded up in a knot behind his head--not the tight, perfect bun he used to wear, but messy and practical. It looks more like him, it looks… 

And then Jonny stops looking, because that’s really kind of creepy, and contents himself to listening to the music through a door. Brian keeps stopping and starting to make sure everything’s perfect, but there are plenty of sections that are smooth enough for long enough that Jonny can start humming along. 

Brian doesn’t play it like Raphaella did, but that’s okay. Raph’s version was off-beat and jazzy, but Brian’s is… it’s  _ intellectual _ , is the only thing Jonny can think to say about it. It sounds like a classically trained pianist sat down and turned the simple sheet music in there into a goddamned sonata. Which is… Jonny can work with it. But it’s definitely not what he was thinking, and it’s not what Brian was doing that half-drunken night at the party, either. Still, it’s impressive. 

As soon as the last few notes fade away, Jonny gives a few cursory knocks on the door before taking the liberty of letting himself in. “Sounding good in here, Bri!”

Brian twists around to glance at him so fast that his wheelchair audibly rattles. “God, Jonny, would you let a guy know you’re there instead of hanging around like a… like some sort of bat?”

Johnny gives him a wink at that. “I gotta keep you on your toes. But really, this is sounding… complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“It’s a compliment.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Yeah. Don’t mention it.” A brief silence falls, and Jonny’s gaze drifts over to Brian’s pale hands. They’re still resting on the piano keys, festooned with those glittering braces Jonny honestly used to think were rings until he actually asked about them. The metal is cold to the touch, he remembers. Colder than Brian’s skin, which is impressive, giving that the boy runs colder than an icebox, but all the same… 

Dammit, this is why he doesn’t let silences like this happen. Who knows what his feelings will decide to do?

Clearing his throat, Jonny flicks his glance up to the sheet music. “So, uh, do you wanna try running through it together? I need to be able to sing on top of a piano, y’know, and it does take practice to figure that out.”

“Yeah, about that.” Brian adjusts his seat in his chair and glowers at his sheet music like it personally insulted him. “I don’t actually think… well, right now at least, I don’t know if I have it down well enough to play while someone’s singing. I’d probably need to stop in a few places, and I don’t know how much that would mess with you, and…”

“Well, we could give it a shot,” Jonny shrugs. “And if you come to a place you don’t know, you could always just…”

“Just what.”

“Improvise?”

Brian snorts. “Have you ever played an instrument before, Jonny?”

“I have played the harmonica,” he replies with the utmost dignity. “And before that, the kazoo.”

“Well, you have to know the song pretty well before you can play it with someone else.” Brian chuckles a little. “I know it may come as a shock to Jonny ‘Wing-It’ D’Ville, but you can’t just  _ improvise _ everything.”

“You were doing pretty well when I heard you at the Christmas party,” Jonny points out, protesting. 

“We do  _ not _ talk about how I played at the Christmas party.” Brian holds up one finger. “It was a mess, and it won’t happen again.”

“I actually rather liked it,” Jonny says, pouting. 

“Well, that’s because you don’t know anything about music theory,” Brian retorts.

“Oh, forget music theory, this is a sea shanty!” Jonny shrugs off his coat and tosses it into the corner, clearing his throat. “Here’s how you do it. Are you ready?”

“Ready?” Brian’s voice squeaks up nervously.

Jonny takes a deep breath and puffs out his chest. “A-five, six, seven-eight, a- _ when I was a little lad me mammi always to-old me, away, haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe! _ ”

With a panicked gulp, Brian plunks his hands down onto the keyboard and tries to keep up. But Jonny is singing dangerously fast, and those classical riffs can only be compressed so much. 

_ “That if I didn’t kiss the boys, me lips would grow all mouldy--” _

Brian’s fingers skitter over the keys unintentionally at that. “Dammit, Jonny--”

_ “Away, haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe!” _

Brian’s playing is erratic as he rushes to keep up with Jonny’s frantic pace through the chorus. Some moments, he’s practically Franz Lizst. Others, he’s just fumbling. And once in a while, when he really gets into it, Jonny can hear that same genuine quality to it as he did at the Christmas party. 

_ “Oh, Louis was the king of France before the revolut-i-on!” _

“Oh, dear God, I thought we were stopping. We’re not stopping?”

_ “Away, haul away, we’ll haul away, Joe!” _

\-------------------

Over the next three days, Brian gets really good really fast, at a rate that could honestly be alarming for anyone else. But the thing is, from what Jonny can gather from off-hand comments and little admissions, Brian used to be  _ really  _ good. Like, competing-all-the-time kind of good. Like, pushed-to-his-limits kind of good. Like, starting-to-hate-the-whole-goddamned-instrument-and-yet-still-winning-every-gold-medal-in-the-region kind of good.

Which is honestly why Jonny wants to be concerned. But from what he can tell, Brian isn’t pushing himself to those limits. The sheet music just… isn’t that hard for him. He’s even managing to combine the fancy technique with some of the energy from the night of the party, and it’s sounding… well, it’s sounding better than Jonny has ever heard it done by anyone before. It’s the nerves that are really going to kill Brian, if it comes to that. 

But Jonny isn’t immune to nerves, either. Even now, when they’re just sitting in a bus on the way to the competition with a handful of other miscellaneous music students, the gnawing at his stomach is still there. 

So Jonny tries to sleep on the ride there. He curls up in his seat with his head tucked up against the seatbelt, careful to avoid another awkward incident like the one on the way home from Marius’, (and why the hell is everything about that goddamned party in his head now?), and tries his best to sleep. 

Of course, resting isn’t the easiest thing in the world right now. Things like this are exactly why Jonny keeps his thoughts moving, keeps his hands moving, keeps everything moving. Because if he pauses for a second, his eyes always end up on Brian’s hands. If he pauses for a minute, his mind starts working on all the ways the competition could go wrong. And if he pauses for even longer…

Well, what if it does go wrong? What happens if he can’t get any scholarship money? What happens then? 

He doesn’t want to think about it. So he puts in his earbuds and blasts some angry indie band or another and tries to take a goddamned fucking nap. 

Fortunately, it works, and he gets a few sweet minutes of oblivion. 

Unfortunately, those are followed by a few fucking terrible minutes of nightmares. Of  _ course _ this would happen now. He’s tired, he’s stressed, he’s sleep-deprived, he’s thinking way too much about home and Uncle Jack, about what could happen, and then…

And then he’s waking up flinching. The hell. He doesn’t know where he is. Mouth full of seatbelt. One earbud in. Nothing playing anymore. Chest pain. Ow. Fuck. Something--something cold in his hand, something squeezing it, something--oh. Brian’s hand. 

Jonny recognizes him by scent before he even properly remembers what’s going on, which is  _ completely _ depressing for a whole multitude of reasons that he does  _ not  _ want to think too hard about right now. But if it takes the smell of paint and coffee and cheap men’s deodorant and that big black coat that still reminds him of the thrift store… well, at least he knows where he is, now. 

“Morning, sunshine,” Brian quips. But he says it softly. 

“Fuck off,” Jonny mumbles, yanking his hand away from Brian’s. He regrets it the moment after, regrets the emptiness and the hurt look that flashes into his friend’s eyes for just an instant. But there’s no going back now. 

“Are you…”

“Yeah, ‘m fine.” Jonny scrubs at his eyes, and his knuckles come away black with eyeliner. His legs ache from being cooped up in this bus for too long. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Brian yawns and stretches. “I was about to doze off, too.”

“Yeah.” Jonny turns to stare out the window, trying to get his bearings. If he’s right, there’s still about an hour left in the ride…

“Are you doing okay, Jonny?” Brian asks quietly. 

There’s a question that never fails to get his hackles up. “Is there a problem? Because last time I checked, I was doing just fine without anybody--”

“Hey, I didn’t mean any offense. I just…” Brian is quiet for a minute. “You know I’m stressed about this competition. Performing in front of crowds has a lot of… fun memories attached, and the scholarship money is important to me. We both know that.”

“Yeah? I mean, not to disregard any of that, but. Your point?”

“I just feel like, maybe… you’re not immune to stuff like that, either. And maybe you’re not listening to your own stress. That’s all.”

Jonny is quiet for a minute, still squinting at street signs as they pass. “Listen, you worry about you, okay? I just need those sweet, sweet piano notes from you, and everything else will work itself out.”

“It’s actually easier for me to breathe if I’m focusing on someone else,” Brian points out reasonably. “And I just don’t want you to fall apart on me after all this, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Jonny mutters. “I just…”

Brian stays quiet, listening. Dammit. Now Jonny has to finish.

“I can’t think about it right now, okay? I just have to get through this competition…” His voice is thick now, goddamnit, and it’s strained with more than just sleep. “I just have to get through this fucking competition, and then I can figure all this out, I just…”

Then Brian’s arm is around his shoulders, and Jonny flinches, but then he melts. He buries his face in Brian’s coat, trying not to lose all of his tight compartmentalization at the first sign of safety, because he knows it isn’t gonna last, but…

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk right now. Or ever. I just wanted to say I’ve got your back, yeah? We’ve got this.”

Jonny feels like he should nod, so he does. But he’s also acutely aware that he’s clinging onto Brian like a kid with a gigantic teddy bear in front of the whole music department, and… oh, wow. Wow, if he doesn’t find something else to think about, he’s about to  _ cry _ . But the problem is that forming words sounds like a monumental task right now, and--

He pulls away and fumbles with his hands, trying to sign something, anything to get his point across. But Brian just frowns. 

“Sorry, Jonny, I don’t…” Then he grabs his phone, unlocks it, and passes it to Jonny with the notes app pulled up. “Here, tell me what you need.”

Jonny takes it with shaking hands--dammit, why are his hands shaking--and makes a few clumsy attempts to type. Brian has an iPhone, the fucker, and the keyboard is just slightly off from what Jonny is used to. But he manages after a few tries. 

_ What are people gonna think if they see us like this? _

Brian just laughs at that. “We could always tell them we’re dating. It seemed to work last time one of us had a public crisis.”

_ Oh, and all my makeup’s royally fucked because what? We were making out? _

Brian flashes a horrible grin, and Jonny regrets asking. But then he takes his hand, and everything seems a little more bearable. 

“We’ve got this, okay? We can tell anybody whatever we want. But we are going to crush this competition together, yeah?” 

Jonny gives a wobbly smile back and squeezes Brian’s hand. 

“Good. Now go back to sleep. A vocalist has to be properly rested.”

Rolling his eyes, Jonny types  _ yes, mum _ . But that doesn’t stop him from handing the phone back and slumping in exhaustion onto Brian’s chest. If they are going to try fake dating again, they might as well look the part. And anyway, Brian owes him this. Turnabout’s fair play, after all. 

Soon, Jonny finds that he can hear the steady pound of Brian’s heart, and the rhythm of it lulls him into a more peaceful rest than he’s had in quite some time. 

Yeah. Turnabout is definitely all that’s happening here.


	5. This Is Nothing Like "While You Were Sleeping" Said It Would Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the competition. (As it turns out, Brian was right to be worried about his roommate.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: hospitals, medical trauma, concern for a character's health. 
> 
> Thanks so much to @herding-octokittens and @casualscribbles for beta reading this chapter!

So this isn’t… great.

Not the competition, mind you. The competition actually went surprisingly well. Brian had held Jonny’s hand all the way up until their first performance, both to comfort his tightly-wound roommate and to soothe his own shaking fingers. The silence as they walked onstage was palpable, and Brian remembers almost throwing up. Then he started playing, and for a moment, he was back in those cold instructors’ offices or huge recital halls and staring down disappointed parents. 

But then Jonny’s voice came in a moment later, and those memories were replaced by tussles in practice rooms and eggnog at parties and warm hands gripping cold ones. And he played. He played well, he played fast, he played… freely, a new skill, but the best one he’s ever learned. And they kept getting called up, and they kept performing, and the adrenaline and the applause made it impossible to think about anything else.

And then it was over. And Jonny grinned, ear to ear, really looking at Brian like nothing else was important. The two of them collapsed onto the floor backstage, and they laughed near-hysterically, and everything was golden and bubbly and champagne-perfect.

And then Jonny’s hand started gripping Brian’s in a new way, in a way that hurt. Panic. He tried to stand, tried to stumble to his backpack before Brian could stop him, and then--

It looked like it hurt. The fall did. He crumpled, he fucking--

His heart. It was his heart. 

Of course Jonny pushed himself too hard, of course he got too caught up in it all, of course he let his body run away with him and let his heart give out on him, and… and…

So now Brian’s standing alone in the lobby of a hospital, gripping his cane and his phone with white knuckles, trying to make sense of the text his prof sent. 

_ He’s in room 314, and they have him stable and healthy. I don’t know if they’re letting in visitors yet, but he’s doing okay, and he told me to tell you to “chill out”. I think they just want to keep him a few more hours for observation. _

  1. 314\. That’s… that’s on the third floor. He can do that. 



Brian finds himself already at the elevator, already pushing the button. It dings, the door slides open, and he steps in. Doors closing. Going up.

Just… Jonny’s  _ face _ . The way his smile went from genuine to terrified to fake all in a moment, the way he kept going with that on-purpose grin he alway seems to be wearing for some reason or another, the way even that faded, and then... 

_ “Hang on, I--sorry, Bri, I just--fuck.” _

_ “Jonny, are you okay?” _

_ “I… oh, goddamnit, this… ah—this just happens, it’s fine, it’s...” _

_ “Jonny. Jonny, can I get you anything? What do you need, Jonny?” _

_ “I—hh—I can get it, I just--there we go, standing up, I told you I’m fine, I just--” _

_ “Wait, Jonny, I--” _

_ “--fuck--” _

_ “Jonny?!” _

The doors ding open. Floor three. Time to go.

Brian is striding down the white hallway of the hospital as fast as his cane will let him, trying to ignore how much he hates places like this. He just needs to see Jonny. He needs to see him all right. He can’t let that crack and thud be the last thing he remembers, he needs something new in his head other than that, other than the grating beep of the medical monitors in here, other than…

Focus. Keep your head here. Listen to the erratic tap-tap-tap of the cane on gray-white linoleum. Imagine someone’s hand in yours if you have to. 

Brian forces a deep breath into his lungs and takes note of the numbers on each door he passes. 309, 310, 311, 312…

“Are you all right, young man?”

Brian blinks and skids to a stop just in time to avoid colliding with a matronly old doctor. She’s staring at him in concern, as if he belongs in one of these beds and not just to visit his friend. 

“Yeah, I’m… fine, yeah, I’m fine.” Brian swallows hard. “314. Do you know where room 314 is? Because my roommate’s in there, and I want to make sure he’s okay.”

“314…” The old doctor checks her sheet, puckering her lips in a thoughtful frown. “Oh, yes, there is someone in there. Although our policy says he can’t have any visitors until--”

“I promise I won’t be in there long,” Brian finds himself pleading. “I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

“He’s in very good condition, it looks like… ah, yes, they were already able to get his heart stable again by the time he was in the ambulance. We’re just making sure it stays that way.” 

“I know, but--”

“He’ll be released later this afternoon, if all goes well. But until then, I’m sorry to say that only close family members--”

“I’m his boyfriend,” Brian blurts out without thinking. “Well, fiance. We’re engaged. Like, married engaged. Engaged to be married. That’s why… that’s why I said roommate. We’re. Living together. As. Erm. Engaged. People. Practically married, at this point. Does that count as family?” 

The doctor’s gray eyebrows creep up in amusement as she surveys him, trying to tell if he’s joking. “Well, then. Anyone as committed as you are ought to be considered family, that’s all I know.”

Brian can tell he’s bright pink by now, but he doesn’t much care. “Does that mean you’ll let me in?”

The doctor gives him a good hard look, then steps aside. “Be quick. 314’s right down there.”

Brian is already making a beeline toward the door, hoping and praying to whatever might be out there that nobody else heard that. It’s not far, so there’s not much of a chance, but a guy can dream…

Then he steps into the room and sees Jonny, as pale as a sheet and nearly passed out on a hospital bed, and his whole world narrows to that one sight. “I… hi,” he manages lamely, unable to stop staring. 

Then Jonny opens one eye and smirks as wide as he can. “Well, hello, dearest fiance.”

“Oh, fuck you.” Brian crosses the room to sink down by Jonny’s bedside, still gripping his cane like he doesn’t know what to do with it. “So you’re here. You’re… in the hospital, I...”

“That’s what it looks like, yeah.” Jonny chuckles slightly, but there’s clearly no energy behind it. “Practically  _ married _ , huh?”

“Listen, I panicked,” he protests. “I was  _ worried _ about you. You--you just--”

“I’m fine,” Jonny interrupts breezily. “This just happens.”

“No, it  _ doesn’t _ !” Now Brian is leaning forward in his seat, ignoring the ache in his back as he does. “You can’t  _ pull  _ that shit on me, Jonny, because I know what it’s like to have your body hate you, and I know  _ you _ , I  _ live _ with you, and I know this doesn’t just fucking  _ happen!  _ And I’m  _ worried  _ about you!”

There’s a long silence. Then Jonny just snorts. “That’s what, the third time I’ve heard you use that word in a week?”

“I…” Brian wants to rise to the bait, but by the time his mouth is open, it’s finally beginning to sink in just how exhausted he is. He’s been running on adrenaline for the past hour, and now it’s starting to ebb from all his limbs, leaving him with exhaustion and exasperation and relief. “I’m just worried, Jonny.”

Jonny shuts his eyes, actually looking a little guilty for a second. “Yeah. I know.”

Sighing, Brian finally lets go of his cane to lean it up against the chair and rub his aching legs. His hands are throbbing from gripping it so tightly and playing so furiously, and  _ God _ , he’s just… “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” Jonny blows out a long sigh, then winces, then opens his eyes again. “And you should know, this honestly isn’t a completely physical thing. Just… stress. Makes it worse. ‘Cause, you know. Living situations. And Uncle Jack. Yeah. All that.”

“Yeah...” Brian knows only a little about this Uncle Jack fellow, but what he knows isn’t good. Jonny lives with him when he’s not at school, Jonny wishes he didn’t, the guy seems to be a bit of a monster. That’s about it. “I told you to take  _ care _ of yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I told you I only needed to hold out long enough to win this stupid competition.” Jonny shrugs. “Does it matter afterwards?”

“ _ Yes, _ it matters!” Brian shoots back. Then he takes a long, deep breath to calm himself back down. “I just want you to take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” Quiet for a while. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you.” Brian rubs at his aching knuckles for a few seconds, then glances around. “Where’s the prof, by the way? Shouldn’t she be in here, I dunno, supervising or something?”

“She’s getting something to eat and bringing me a to-go box, she’ll be back in a few minutes or so.” Jonny shrugs. “Like… maybe a quarter of an hour? I dunno, what time is it?”

“Hold on, lemme see.” Brian digs his phone out of his pockets, squinting at the screen and trying to ignore the barrage of notifications on there. “Looks like it’s about 5:20, so… wait. Wait, hold on a minute.”

“Hold-on-a-minute  _ why _ ?” Jonny props himself up on an elbow, sensing the change in Brian’s demeanor. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on one minute…” Brian tries once, twice, three times to put in his passcode with too-eager fingers. “This could be… they sent the email. They sent the final standings, it looks like…”

Now Jonny is sitting bolt upright, and the heartrate monitors behind him are all picking up speed. “ _ Brian! _ Tell-me-tell-me- _ tell-me _ !”

“Why can’t you just--”

“I don’t have my phone on me, I’m in the damn hospital! Just read the list and fucking  _ tell me _ , I gotta know, I gotta--”

“Well, if you’d shut up for a second, I’d be able to read a little bit faster…” Brian scrolls tersely, trying to process all the names on the list. Tenth place, sixth place, third place… Oh. “Jonny.”

“Brian, if you don’t tell me this goddamn instant--”

“Jonny, we got  _ second place _ . We got the second biggest scholarship in the _ entire competition _ .” Brian stares, and then he grins, and then the joy bubbles up between his aching ribs and he actually laughs out loud in delight. When he glances up, Jonny is already punching the air in victory.

“ _ Hell _ yeah!” The monitors behind him are spiking, but he ignores them and falls triumphantly back onto his pillows, eyes shining. “Hell yeah. We did that. The two of us. We did it.”

Brian’s own heart is racing, his face is pink, and he’s grinning widely. “We did it.” 

Old thoughts of past competitions aren’t easy to shove away, but despite it all, this feels good in its own right. Neither he nor Jonny are going to have to leave the college any time soon. And more than that, they didn’t just do something necessary, they did something  _ awesome _ . They sounded good. It was fun. And the competition judges agreed. 

Slowly, he realizes that Jonny is rambling about something or another, probably all of his dreams of grandeur and plans to celebrate this incredible triumph. Brian’s grin just widens as he gazes over at his roommate, listening to the torrent of words and the beep of the monitors as they settle down from erratic beeping to a happy, rapid clip. They did this. They did it, and Brian is so caught up in it all that he could reach across the room and just  _ kiss _ Jonny--

“Oh, hi, you two,” comes a voice from the door, and Brian realizes that the professor has come back. “What’s going on in here?”

Well. That thought is going to have to be dealt with later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've finished the first 5 chapters, and there's just one left! Stay tuned to see these boys date for real in a couple of days! And while you wait, feel free to listen to this companion playlist I made, that corresponds roughly chronologically with this fic:
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3RPaHxvNQ6VxrjMNDG1YSr?si=YkvB7qTMSEOOJR6QvstVcw
> 
> Stay safe, everyone. And I hope this winter, with whatever holidays you do or don't celebrate, is a wonderful one.


	6. Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know what's coming in this one. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: a brief mention of Jonny's Uncle Jack, but that's about it. The boys are finally happy. 
> 
> Thanks so much to the wonderful @magnusburnsides-but-small for beta reading this chapter!

For once in his life, Jonny is actually trying to be good. Well, not morally speaking. Never that. But ever since the hospital, he’s actually been trying to take care of his heart, with more or less decent results. 

He has picked absolutely zero fights since getting back (except for the one in the student union, but that doesn’t really count). He tried to keep his heart rate down when he was on the phone with Uncle Jack and with the college, fighting to get to stay in the dorms over break. He even did  _ breathing exercises _ to keep his stupid pulse steady when he found out he would be able to stay, instead of punching something and yelling in triumph. He has been  _ trying _ . 

Why, you may ask? The fact is, Jonny needs his heart to hold out on him for one specific reason and one alone. He’s about to have the one talk that terrifies him more than any confrontations with Jack ever could. 

He’s about to actually admit to having feelings. Good Lord.

Taking a deep breath, Jonny tightens his grip on a bouquet of flowers and opens the door to his room. Brian is inside, of course, and looks up from his computer to see who’s at the door. 

“Hey, Jonny. Oh, ooh, why the flowers?”

Jonny swallows hard. “Well. Um. They’re… for someone.”

Then Brian’s eyes widen in comprehension. “Oh my God. Those are  _ roses _ . You’re going to ask someone out, aren’t you?” There’s the triumphant teasing of a teenage sort of  _ I-know-you-like-someone _ in his voice, but also a note of… something else. Jonny doesn’t want to analyze that too much right now. 

“I, uh, yeah. That’s the plan. Like, for coffee.” He tries to grin. casually “Thoughts?”

“What, you want my advice?” Brian chuckles and puts his laptop aside, rolling his wheelchair to better face his roommate. “You haven’t even told me who you want to ask out yet, how am I supposed to tell you what I think?”

Jonny’s cheeks are burning, but he forces himself to keep going. He can do this. He can do this. “Is it not obvious?”

Puzzled, Brian arches an eyebrow. “Should it be?”

“Should…” Jonny clenches his jaw, trying not to scream. Breathing exercises, breathebreathebreathe. “Brian, you idiot, I’m trying to ask  _ you _ .”

A million kinds of baffled realization dance in Brian’s eyes at that, and his hands instinctively go to the wheels of his chair like he wants to run away. “You--is this some bizarre continuation of the fake dating thing? Is this a prank? Do you need me for some sort of party, now? Because you didn’t have to do all that, you could’ve just asked--”

“ _ Brian _ ,” Jonny cuts him off. The heart rate is unsalvageable, now, but he kind of figured it would be. “I’m asking you out. On a date. To coffee. No fakery about it, just… dating. You. Me. Yeah.”

Brian’s eyebrows bunch together. “ _ What? _ ”

“I mean, you don’t have to--you can always say no,” Jonny says, backpedaling. “I just--I just thought--Brian, I really like you, and I have no idea if this will work, it probably won’t, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least give it a shot, you know? I wanna give this a shot. Even if it goes down in flames, which, it probably will, I know that, but--”

“You… want to go out with  _ me _ ?” Brian blinks once. 

With a huff, Jonny thrusts out the roses towards him. “What the hell does it look like?”

Slowly, a broad grin spreads across Brian’s face. “Wait. Are you telling me…” And now he’s  _ laughing _ , the fucker, actually  _ laughing _ in spite of the obvious gravity of this ridiculous situation. “Are you telling me that we’ve both been pining this whole time?”

Now it’s Jonny’s turn to stare. “ _ Both?” _

Brian collapses into a giggle, dropping his head into his hands and twisting his fingers into those honey-colored curls. “Jonny, you have no idea how much I’ve been  _ suffering _ , how much I’ve been perfectly convinced that I was the only one of us who both loved and hated the concept of only pretending to be your boyfriend, because…” He snorts, actually snorts. “Oh my God. We are  _ idiots _ .”

Despite it all, Jonny finds a baffled and relieved laugh bubbling up somewhere beneath his diaphragm. “So… you want to get coffee, then?”

“Yes, I want to get coffee!” Brian manages between gasps. “Name a date and time, and I’ll be there!”

Jonny sinks down into his office chair, reeling from the absurdity of it all. “So you mean to tell me… that this entire time...”

“Well, not this  _ entire _ time,” Brian corrects. “But… maybe around the Christmas party?”

“No, I fell for  _ you _ at the Christmas party,” Jonny argues indignantly. But he can already feel his chest beginning to relax. “You were playing the piano like anything, you were--the music, it was fucking  _ beautiful _ .”

“Well, if it’s just a music crush we’re talking about, then I guess it was even earlier for me,” Brian admits. “I… you were singing, that one time, in the kitchen, and…”

“I thought you were off-limits at that point!” Jonny throws his hands up, only belatedly remembering that he’s still holding the flowers. “I was trying to flirt with you from the beginning, during that walk in, what the hell, October?”

“And to be fair, I was in a weird place back in October.” Brian leans back in his chair, still obviously amused by this whole situation. “And clearly, my life has not gotten any less weird since then. But, uh… I guess I’m more okay with it, now?”

“Well, I’m damn glad you are,” Jonny retorts. He holds out the flowers, trying to maintain his grumpy facade. “Here, you ought to take these fool things before I accidentally destroy ‘em completely.”

Brian’s cheeks are a happy pink as he rolls his eyes and accepts the bouquet. “I still can’t get over this.  _ You _ bought me flowers. You went out and actually bought me flowers. You, Jonny D’Ville, are a romantic.”

That’s the worst accusation of all. “I am not!” he blurts out, recoiling away from the roses like he’s been burned.

Brian just grins and holds the bouquet over his heart. “I’m dating a hopeless romantic. I really, truly am.”

“No! Stop! This is slander! Libel!”

“Aw. You’re cute when you’re flustered.” And then Brian actually winks, sending Jonny into further paroxysms of defensiveness. 

“You are--the worst human being alive, I will have you know that!” 

“Man, you really know how to sweet talk, too.” Brian laughs, tucks one of the roses behind one ear, and starts rummaging through his cabinets for a mug to put the rest of them in. “So this is real, then? Coffee at, say… well, I’m free right now, if you are.”

Jonny holds his head in his hands, wavering between laughter and indignance and deep, deep relief. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m free all afternoon.”

“Perfect. Then it’s a date.”

\----------------------------------------------

At first, getting coffee with Brian doesn’t quite register in Jonny’s head. It’s a good time, to be sure. Brian orders something frosty and peppermint-y, despite the chill of the weather, and Jonny orders black hot coffee with no cream and four sugars. They make fun of each other for their orders, they find a corner with a couch and room for Brian’s wheelchair, they drink, they laugh. But Jonny’s idiot brain still won’t catch up to the fact that this is really, actually happening. 

Maybe it’s because it’s  _ almost _ happened so many times. They’re roommates, of course they’ve studied together in a coffeeshop before. Jonny already knew exactly what Brian would want to order, down to the extra ice and oat milk. They’ve done this a million times. 

But now they’re  _ here _ , here in a totally different way. One of Jonny’s hands is wrapped around a piping hot cup of coffee, and the other is tangled in Brian’s smooth, cold fingers. And he isn’t studying anything but the arch of Brian’s nose and the rose tucked into his hair and his dimples when he laughs. He’s imagined this a million times, and he’s even faked it once or twice. But today isn’t any sort of game, for once. This is real, just real. And Jonny doesn’t know what to do with it. 

“Hello? Earth to Mr. D’Ville?”

Blinking, Jonny snaps himself out of his thoughts. “Yeah, sorry, just… thinking, I guess.” His gaze lands on Brian’s smiling lips, and he has to smile back. “What did I miss?”

Brian laughs at him and squeezes his hand. “I was just asking if you wanted to go look at the town lights after this. They’re supposed to be really nice, but I haven’t actually made it downtown to see them yet.”

“Oh, yeah, Ashes was talking about those a while ago,” Jonny remembers. “They’re not too far, are they?”

“Yeah, they start just a block or two from here.” Brian takes a sip of his iced coffee, nodding. “And I don’t think I’m up for staying out too much longer, but I wouldn’t mind taking a bit of a detour while we’re here. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

“Me? Brian, you know me.” Jonny rolls his eyes with a snort. “If something’s shiny, I’m there.”

“It’s the six-year-old instinct,” Brian muses sagely. 

Offended, Jonny presses a hand to his chest. “I’ll have you know that it’s in fact the  _ corvid _ instinct, and that crows have been found to be at least as intelligent as a seven-year-old child, thank you.”

“If you say so.” Brian chuckles. “C’mon, though, it’s getting kind of late. We should probably head out so we can catch the lights before it gets too cold.”

“Ah, right, right.” Jonny gives Brian’s hand a squeeze before letting go and hauling himself to his feet. “I’m ready to go when you are.”

The walk is short, and Jonny gets to rest his hand on Brian’s shoulder as he wheels himself down the sidewalk. They talk, they laugh--and then they fall silent when they round the corner and see the first street of lights. 

Rows upon rows of shops have all been hung with endless strings of Christmas lights, and the warm glow blooms out into the grey-blue twilight. The bridge down the street has been practically covered with LED designs, and incandescent bulbs dangle from every rooftop. It’s… it’s gorgeous. It’s brilliant. Jonny can’t look away.

Beside him, Brian chuckles softly. “I told you you were a six-year-old.”

“Hey!” But when Jonny glances over, he sees that Brian’s eyes are just as wide and entranced. A million pinpoints of light are reflected on those irises, and he looks almost like an angel in that moment. 

“They are really nice, aren’t they?” Brian murmurs appreciatively. 

“Yeah, they really are.” Jonny slips his hand into Brian’s and leans up against his wheelchair, returning his gaze to the view he’s actually supposed to be looking at. 

As the two boys marvel in silence, a few white flakes begin to drift down from the rapidly darkening sky. They swirl through the air, illuminated by the golden glow of the lights, and turn the whole scene into magic. 

“Snow,” Brian whispers reverently. 

Jonny looks back down to see his roommate smiling from ear to ear. The soft lines of his face are cast into relief by the warm lights and cold shadows, and his long lashes are already sprinkled with constellations of snowflakes. God, he’s beautiful. 

“I can’t believe you actually like this stuff,” Jonny finds himself saying, although his teasing can’t hide the smitten note in his voice. 

“I can’t believe you  _ don’t _ ,” Brian tosses back fondly. Then he glances up at Jonny with a new kind of look in his eyes. “Seriously, though… It’s good to be here. With you. Doing this. Together.”

Jonny grins. “The feeling is. Erm. Mutual?”

“So…” Brian tilts his head awkwardly, laughing a little at himself. “Want to keep doing this? Going out? For coffee and stuff?”

“Yeah.” Jonny squeezes Brian’s hand, running his thumb across his smooth skin and frigid braces. “Yeah, I definitely do.”

The two make their way back to the dorm slowly through the snow and the twilight, tired and content in equal measure. And slowly, Jonny discovers that this finally does feel real. Brian next to him. The warmth in his chest, despite the freezing air. Because, as much as he hates to give into the cliche, Jonny’s heart really does feel like a stupid fireplace, and...

Well, damn it all, Jonny is pretty sure he just managed to fall in love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is. :) 
> 
> I really want to thank everybody who's commented on this fic so far, y'all have no idea how much your kind words mean to me. I've honestly been Going The Fuck Through It this winter, but every comment I see genuinely makes my day so much better and brings me a completely irrepressible smile. Thank you guys for supporting this silly fic and bringing me so much joy. I literally write and post because of people like you. <3


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